David Whitehouse

David Whitehouse serves on the Academic Advisory Committee for the contrarian Global Warming Policy Foundation.

Bio
Whitehouse has a doctorate in astrophysics and was successively BBC Science Correspondent and Science Editor of BBC News Online. He is the author of a number of books on solar system astronomy and the history of astronomy.

Failed 2010 Global temperature prediction
In an early December 2010 Global Warming Policy Foundation blogpost, Whitehouse predicted that "2010 will be remembered for just two warm months [March and June], attributable to the El Nino effect, with the rest of the year being nothing but average, or less than average temperature."

According to the NASA and NOAA datasets, 2010 tied with 2005 for the hottest year on record ; and NASA's GISS data showed November 2010 as the hottest November on record.

And the use of the term "average" in Whitehouse's statement was misleading, as the dataset referenced (CRU, through Oct 2010) actually shows every month in 2010 to be considerably warmer than the corresponding historic (1850+) average. - a pattern evident visually in NASA's GISS data. . Whitehouse later explained (see Talk page) that he meant the "average" for just one decade - a timeframe statisticians consider too short to be meaningful in seeing the underlying trend.

Related SourceWatch articles

 * Global Warming Policy Foundation

Website
http://www.davidwhitehouse.com/Home.html

External articles
Ex-BBC science man slams corp: 'Evangelical, shallow and sparse'